


if you’re lonely (darling, you’re glowing).

by mihkrokosmos



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Heavy on the hurt/comfort, Jean Kirstein Being An Asshole, M/M, Mentioned Eren Yeager, POV Jean Kirstein, Sleepy Cuddles, Spoilers, armin and jean are the main characters and the rest are briefly mentioned, but be careful if ur anime only, for a little bit. and it’s about eren so, okay i don’t know how bad the spoilers might be, theyre all quite vague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29230446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihkrokosmos/pseuds/mihkrokosmos
Summary: Jean meets him when they’re fresh-faced cadets, breathless in equal amounts of fear and exhaustion. His cheeks are rosy with exertion, blond hair sticking to his face. It’s not the first time Jean has seen him — they talk, sometimes, when everyone crowds around the same bunk after lights out to swap stories — but it’s the first time Jean has seen him and thought,I don’t know him.
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Jean Kirstein
Comments: 6
Kudos: 75





	if you’re lonely (darling, you’re glowing).

**Author's Note:**

> feels like i’m back in 2016.. damn. anyway i’m rly not interested in debating the morals and ethics of attack on titan or isayama rn but pls know that if i see anyone slandering the warriors it’s on sight. anyway!
> 
> title from this side of paradise by coyote theory bc i saw it on a jean kirschtein playlist and had a gay moment.
> 
> also not relevant but in my head jean is trans. sorry just had to get that out there

Jean meets him when they’re fresh-faced cadets, breathless in equal amounts of fear and exhaustion. His cheeks are rosy with exertion, blond hair sticking to his face. It’s not the first time Jean has seen him — they talk, sometimes, when everyone crowds around the same bunk after lights out to swap stories — but it’s the first time Jean has seen him and thought, _I don’t know him_ . It’s stupid, because Jean can’t know everyone and Armin will probably follow Jaeger’s stupid ass into the Survey Corps, so it doesn’t even _matter_. Still, Jean watches Armin’s mouth twitch into a smile, blue eyes squinting in the intense sunlight, and he turns away biting the inside of his own cheek. 

Marco claps Jean on the shoulder, huffing out ragged breaths. Jean shrugs his hand off, scrunching his nose up at the stench of sweat. Hell, they _all_ smell awful. Training was rougher than usual, considering the insane heatwave. 

“Are the showers free?” He asks Marco, who does his own little shrug in return.

“Prob’ly not, but you might wanna queue now if you want hot water.”

_Hot water_ , Marco says, like the cadet showers are anything other than fucking freezing. Marco snickers at his stare of unimpressed disbelief.

“Hey, maybe we’ll all be happy to have cold showers. It’s so _warm_.”

A blur of blond crosses Jean’s vision, brown eyes widening as he realises Armin is about to barrel into him a second too late. They land in a heap on the rough ground, dust and grit clinging to their damp uniforms.

“Oi!” Jean huffs, grimacing at the weight pinning him down, “what’s the rush?”

“Ah,” Armin cringes, scrambling to his feet and offering Jean a hand up. He accepts, because he’s no idiot, and Armin gestures frantically as he tries to explain, “it was an accident, I promise. Eren insisted on racing to the showers, and I was distracted. I’m so sorry! Are you alright?”

Jean wants to ask if _Armin_ is alright, what with agreeing to run in such weather. Plus, his face has gone from faintly pink to a cherry red, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. He decides against it, dismissing the boy’s concern with a wave of his hand.

“It’s fine, just watch where you’re going. S’pose that’s on you for humouring someone like Jaeger.”

Armin falters, like he’s not sure whether he should entertain Jean’s vitriol or defend his friend like he does so often, but he says nothing in the end. Jean watches as he jogs the rest of the way back to the barracks. He absentmindedly brushes down his uniform, ignoring Marco’s stifled laughter. At least Connie and Sasha missed it. They could be _insufferable_ , which was bullshit because the pair of them were more embarrassing than Jean could ever be.

“C’mon, Kirschtein,” Marco snorts, “let’s get your clumsy ass into the shower, yeah?”

“He ran into me!”

“Uh, huh. Yeah, yeah.”

“You saw him!”

Jean ends up chasing Marco to the showers, shoving his way past Eren to tackle his friend through the doorway. The scolding from the Commandant was mostly worth it.

“ _Ask me why my heart’s been in my throat._ ”

Marco doesn’t make it into the Military Police. Nothing more, nothing less. Jean watches his body burn, indistinguishable from the rest of the deceased. The Military Police don’t even know his name. Never will. Marco is just another number in the ledger, another person lost and the thought sickens Jean down to a visceral part of his core he wasn’t even aware of. Not for the first time, Jean thinks about how little he knows about the people he trained alongside. Marco wouldn’t have had that problem. He seemed to talk to damn near everyone, magnetic in his genuine curiosity about those he owed nothing to. He wasn’t like the selfish bastards — he wasn’t like _Jean_ — everything about him was honest. Real.

And it meant nothing.

Jean crouches by the funeral pyre, fingers tugging gouges into his scalp as he screws his eyes shut. It wasn’t _fair_ . He knew, he knew nothing was ever fucking fair, but a part of him wanted to march up to whatever deity was orchestrating this bullshit and demand an explanation for it. Jaeger could turn into a fucking titan, why couldn’t Marco live? It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. Jean would cry about going home, if his home wasn’t decimated by titans. The very titans who had taken his best friend away and _it wasn’t fair_. He clapped both hands over his ears, face screwing up as he tried to manage his breathing.

He’s vaguely aware of a presence standing near his shoulder, their hesitance palpable.

“Jean?” The person asked, the sound of it muffled. Jean flinched, lowering his hands as Armin sat on the ground beside him. He said nothing more, the sky blue of his eyes muted in the firelight. Jean remembers the haunting emptiness he’d witnessed on the rooftop, the way Armin’s gaze remained unseeing, the guttural screaming. Jean grimaced at the memory, rubbing his hands on the coarse fabric of his cadet jacket.

They stayed silent, staring at the embers, until Armin coughed into his hand.

“He— Marco was a good guy. He deserved to live,” Armin murmured, barely audible over the low crackling and intermittent sobs from other mourners, “I know it’s not about deserving. We have no way of deciding who lives or dies, but he… he deserved to live. Does that make sense?”

Jean squinted at him, somewhat bewildered.

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” he retorted. Armin shook his head, exhaling slowly.

“I’m not trying to. I’m just— we aren’t guaranteed a long life, are we? Even those who don’t join the military, nothing is certain. Marco did good whilst he was here, but now he’s not here anymore and… I guess everyone else has to fill that space. All we can do is try to make sure his death wasn’t pointless.”

Jean hummed, caught up in all the ways Marco could have died. Each one was worse than the last. At the end of the day, he had probably died alone. Armin said it wasn’t about _deserving_ , but Jean hoped someone had been there. Someone had tried. 

“Thanks, Armin,” Jean sighed, standing up and offering him a hand. Armin took it, offering Jean a faint smile in return. There were no condolences, no useless sentiments. They were too young to be this jaded, but what else could they be? It was fucking morbid. Armin seemed to search his face and whatever he found prompted him to pat Jean on the shoulder. The physical contact caught him off-guard, but Armin was walking off before he could say anything.

“ _I’ve never been in love, I’ve been alone.”_

Someone was crying. Jean blearily opened his eyes, squinting into the darkness of the room. His back cracked with the effort of rolling over, a soft groan escaping his lips. The sobbing seemed to have petered off into quiet gasping. Even that was stifled, like they were holding a pillow to their face or had ducked under the thin sheets. Jean blinked slowly, eyes adjusting too slowly for his liking. He pushed himself upright, rubbing a palm down his face.

A cursory glance around the room informed him that he had been the only one disturbed, though that was hardly surprising. Everyone was exhausted. The regiment had been thrown from one disaster to the next. Between the Female Titan ( _Annie_ , his mind supplied unhelpfully, _a comrade. A person you trained beside_ ) and the fucking… Titan inside the wall, everyone needed a break. Would they get one? Of course not. The Survey Corps existed to be on the front lines, cannon fodder for those who feared death over facing their sins. 

“Jean?” Armin rasped out, “why are you awake?” 

Jean gave himself whiplash when he turned to Armin’s bunk, pulling a face at the strain in his neck.

“Why are you crying?”

A callous question. Jean had suspected that Armin’s feelings towards Annie ran a little deeper than that of two like-minded souls, a little more intense than that of two fellow trainees. He had no proof, but he’d heard the whispers. Betrayal was never easy to swallow. It was made more bitter, still, when there was something to betray. To his credit (and Jean’s pride), Armin didn’t comment on it. 

“Bad dream,” was his whispered response, “usually, I don’t—”

“I get it.”

“Sorry for waking you up.”

“ _I get it_ , Armin,” Jean murmured, “you don’t need to apologise. We’re all a mess. Weren’t you the one that said crying was normal?”

Armin managed a half-hearted laugh, though it was choked by the raspiness of his voice. Jean wondered — perhaps a little unfairly — how long Armin had been crying before someone had woken up and noticed it. 

“Come over here,” Jean blurted out, cringing at how strange it sounded, considering the suddenness. He could practically feel Armin halting, trying to process it, “I mean, I can hardly hear you from your bunk. And, uh, it might be nice to be close to someone. Since you’re so upset.”

Armin remained stationary long enough for Jean to wholeheartedly regret opening his mouth, but he crawled out of his own bunk with painstaking slowness, each move looking as if it caused him physical discomfort. It felt like years passed before Armin was scuttling beside Jean, blanket pulled over his head. His knuckles were whitened by the strength of his grip, betraying the tension which remained in spite of their small conversation. Jean resisted the urge to pat him on the head. Armin was not fragile, no matter how he had scored back when they were cadets. Only an idiot would underestimate those blue eyes.

“Did you… want to say anything?” Armin ventured, further curling into his blanket, “in particular, that is.”

Good question. Jean… wasn’t sure. He was nowhere near Jaeger levels of impulsiveness (he’d vehemently deny even being close to it), but he tended to speak before thinking. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He _did_ think, but sometimes it slipped his mind that people didn’t… always want to hear what he had to say.

“You’re only human,” was all Jean could mumble, “you couldn’t have known Annie would do… that. The crystal thing, or whatever it is. Don’t blame yourself for not being able to prevent it. It would’ve been worse if your plan didn’t work at all.”

Jean didn’t exactly know what had happened when Annie had transformed — he knew that Eren, Armin and Mikasa had been caught in the blast — but he could imagine the pressure Armin would have put himself under afterwards. He’d probably been beating himself up about not being able to create a contingency plan for Annie’s hidden weapon.

“Are you trying to comfort me?” Armin prodded, looking a little bewildered at Jean’s clumsy attempt. Jean was, in fact, trying to be somewhat consolatory, but upon learning he was doing a shit job at it, he just shrugged.

“I’m just… saying. You’re smart and Annie was smarter. Doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be part of the Survey Corps, right?”

Neither of them wanted to broach the topic. The reason why Annie would turn against people who had considered her a friend. Fuck, the reason why she’d rather encase herself in a crystal for who knows how long instead of facing justice. Jean had heard people whispering that she’d cried. Back in the forest, that was. The only two people who would’ve seen were Captain Levi and Mikasa. Neither were the gossiping type, so Jean had no way to confirm whether it was fact or fiction. All of a sudden, everything seemed _bigger_ than the three walls. Sometimes, Jean made himself breathless thinking about how small they were in comparison to how big the world must be.

(And it had to be big, because how else could it fit so many mysteries?)

“Long day tomorrow,” Armin commented.

“Every day is a long day,” Jean snorted, lying back down anyway. The bunk was warmer, with Armin in it. Jean rolled over, facing away. He heard rustling beside him, felt the shifting of the thin sheets as Armin straightened out and lay beside Jean. Wait, he was _staying_? That wasn’t— Jean didn’t mean for him to sleep beside him, in the same bunk, not really. He’d just been offering to sit and talk with Armin, to make Armin feel better. Not that he minded. The bunks were close enough to each other to make it feel as if everyone shared a bed. It wasn’t that different. 

“Yeah, that’s true. We should try and get some sleep, regardless.”

Jean spluttered at Armin’s frank statement, about to protest that Jean had been asleep — had been quite happy to go back to sleep — and that _Armin_ was the one keeping people awake.

“Goodnight, Jean,” Armin continued, blithely ignoring Jean’s indignance, “thank you.”

_You’re welcome._

“Night, Arlert.”

“ _Feels like I’ve been living life asleep_.”

Jean’s curled into himself, arms wrapped around his head like he can block out the memories. His muscles ache, from tension and stiffness alike. Marco once said to him that he would make a good leader because he understood weakness. Then again, Marco had never seen him like _this_. Every inch of him felt battered and bruised. He imagined that he looked like that, too. The cabin they were all holed up in didn’t have luxuries like mirrors, but it wasn’t exactly an unrealistic expectation. Holy shit, he felt like he was going to be sick.

Weakness was something they’d all stared in the eyes and shoved past, only to have it catch up to them later. Once the adrenaline was gone, they tumbled back into uneasy sleep and nauseating flashbacks. The what-ifs were the worst part. _What if_ they’d talked Bertholdt and Reiner down, _what if_ they’d figured out their identities before, _what if_. What-fucking-if. Jean couldn’t even pinpoint where it went wrong, only that it did and now the Corps were practically halved and Eren might have some— Jean didn’t even know how to describe it, but they hadn’t all died and Eren had some sort of control over titans. As if he wasn’t enough of a freak.

The cabin was freezing. Jean heaved out a breath, watched it fog up in front of him.

He was so fucking tired. Tired of wondering if each day would be the day something snapped and shattered for good. Tired of the secrets and the constant fear. Jean didn’t even know if there was anything left in the world that could shock him. Okay, well, that was probably just tempting fate.

Jean leaned on the wall, using it as leverage to stand up. His joints protested at the movement, eliciting another quiet sigh. 

“It’ll be dinner,” a familiar voice calls, “soon. You should wash up now, if you’re planning on it.”

Mikasa hardly spared him a glance, having said her piece. It didn’t sting the way it would have, way back when they were part of the 104th and Jean thought her hair was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. He acknowledged her announcement with a small nod, ruffling a hand through his hair with a tired sort of listlessness. His gaze slid to the figure standing beside her, eyes widening by a fraction when he spotted Armin. The blond waved at him, blue eyes full of a strange empathy. Mikasa tracked the movement, eyebrows twitching up in what _might_ have been amusement, if Mikasa was capable of such mortal emotions.

“I’ll be there soon,” Jean muttered.

Mikasa hummed, turning and walking off.

“Jean!”

Jean looked up, eyebrows furrowed at Armin’s attempt at a smile. He tried to mimic it, but Armin cringed sympathetically at whatever showed on his face.

“Armin,” Jean echoed, shuffling away from the wall, “I thought you were with Jaeger. Has he knocked himself out?”

“Play nice. He’s… you saw him today. He’s getting there.”

“Sure, I saw _something_ ,” Jean scoffed, “and what about you?”

“Sorry?”

Jean shook his head, tugging idly at the straps of his uniform. 

“You think he’s worth all of this? Do you think the training will help at all?” 

Armin was silent long enough for Jean to grow seriously concerned with their chances. If Armin didn’t have an answer, Jean was ready to call the entire operation a day and put a bullet in his own head. 

“I want him to be,” Armin confessed, “it’s silly of me to put my hopes in such a— well, we all know how Eren can be. But, I want something to believe in. I don’t know if he’ll fix all our problems, I don’t know if our problems can be fixed, I… I just want him to be the answer.”

“Because then you have an answer,” Jean finished for him, “and everything before this seems less pointless, right?”

“Right,” Armin nodded, smiling faintly. He leaned on the wall beside Jean, tilting his head back and crushing the blond strands of hair against the roughened wood. Jean watched his lips part in a tired sigh, watched the long lashes brushing over his cheeks as he closed his eyes. 

He could feel his own face heating up. Jean pulled his gaze away from Armin, picking at the scabs on his hands. A slender palm interrupted him, intertwining their fingers as Armin tugged him towards the dining area.

“They won’t heal if you do that,” was all he said. 

_“Love so strong, it makes me feel so weak.”_

The sky had always interested Jean. Paradis was nowhere near understanding the way the sun travelled across the sky, dragging the moon behind it. When he was younger, he used to stare at the stars from his bedroom window. Not for any particular reason, just because they were pretty and Jean had always liked pretty things. Or… so his mother had said, anyway. 

He was staring at a different sky, now, but the stars were the same. Their stay in Marley was certainly interesting, to say the least. The unfamiliarity of it all was both terrifying and exhilarating. Jean couldn’t quite make head nor tails of it — being so far from what he called _home_ was already wreaking havoc on his nerves, never mind the absurdity of Marleyan inventions and customs. 

“Do you think it’s unfair?” Armin asked, from where his head lay on Jean’s shoulder. Intimacy came easily, when you had been through the equivalent of infinite lifetimes with the same person. Jean thinks he could endure an infinite more, if it meant Armin would still trust Jean enough to cling to him when he needed to. 

“Is what unfair?” Jean countered. A lot of things were unfair. The war they recalled nothing of, the titans, the addition of a clock ticking in exchange for Armin’s life as a whole. Jean was finding that there were more unfair things in the world than fair things. He wasn’t quite sure what even constituted fairness, anymore. 

“The world moved on so quickly,” Armin whispered. Jean’s grip tightened on his shoulder. “We were stuck on an island whilst they invented cars and flying ships. Nobody came for us.”

Jean didn't point out that the Eldians hadn’t wanted to be found, that it was the choice of the king to barricade a nation behind nothing except three walls and a prayer. They both knew it, but it didn’t make the facts any easier to swallow. 

“It’s a little unfair,” Jean replied, slowly, “but I’m also glad. You think a car would have made it out of Mitras? They’d have everything under lock and key.” 

Armin laughed at that, which Jean counted as a victory. A small one, but he had learned to treasure those even more. 

“You have a point.”

“When do I _not_?”

Jean elbowed Armin at his little noise of disbelief, which sent them both tumbling to the ground as their balance was disrupted. They stared at each other, then at where the others were resting. Jean didn't know who cracked first, but they were dissolving into muffled laughter before it could be helped. Jean buried his face into the crook of Armin’s neck, pressing a soft kiss to the patch of skin he could reach and then pulling back. 

“What happens now?” Armin murmured. It struck Jean how many questions Armin had, despite his commendable intelligence. Then again, it wasn’t wrong to say that he was intelligent _because_ he asked so many questions. 

“Fuck if I know,” Jean grumbled, “we can handle it, though.”

(Jean met him when they’re fresh-faced cadets, breathless in equal amounts of fear and exhaustion. The fear and the exhaustion never leave, but Jean sees him now and thinks, _I know him_ ).

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh my twitter is @R3XLAPlS because zhongli rights!!!! stay hydrated and wear a mask y’know


End file.
